The Long Grind Before You Become an Overnight Success

I read Seth Godin’s “The Dip: The Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit and When to Stick” over the weekend.

It has some interesting approaches to life and work. Let me paraphrase:

If you (or your company) want to be “the best in the world” at something…you need to work through the beginning phase of development and be able to hang on and evolve through the long development phase, which he calls “the dip”…and you need to drop any distracting investments of time and money for which you do not have adequate advantage to make it through “the dip” — this is called “intelligent quitting”.

The long development phase, which can get progressively more difficult, might be a “dip” with success at the end of the tunnel, or a “cul-de-sac”—a place where you can work forever and never get the rainbow. And you have to learn to discern the difference…

There are big advantages that accrue to those who are “best in the world”.

The Dip is a very interesting and inspiring book which I encourage everyone to read. You can take a lot of meaning from its pages but to me, the book’s main idea is that usually “overnight success” is not actually overnight. For you to become really, really successful you often have to go through an extended period of time where you work VERY hard yet you don’t actually feel like you are making any progress.

This article describes this situation perfectly: The Long Grind Before You Become an Overnight Success.

The lesson here is that if you are working on a new idea, a new business, a new product…a new anything then you should be prepared for the long and hard-fought “dip” which you very probably will go through on your way to success.

Refreshing Like Chapaa

Well, in keeping with our tradition of changing the look and feel of likechapaa.com every year or so, we are very pleased to announce that Like Chapaa now wears a new look.

We think (and hope) that this is better than the old one and that it is easier on the eyes and that it makes it easier for you to get around the site.

What do you think of our new look?

PS: The new look is courtesy of Nickel Pro.

The Rise and Rise of “E-sports”

Starcraft II

Starcraft II

Video games have come a long way in the last 15 years. No longer is it a pastime of the those locked away in their bedrooms. Now there is a whole world of video gamers playing with friends, and play against others.

Electronic sports, “e-sports“, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Nowadays, professional video gaming is quickly becoming a legitimate sport. A few years ago, poker took the limelight, blurring the line between professional gaming and non-athletic sports. Now, Major League Gaming and dozens of other leagues have popped up around competitive games like StarCraft and Halo: Reach.

In the nation of South Korea, StarCraft is literally a national sport and is equally as popular (if not more) as sports like basketball or baseball. StarCraft 2, in particular is currently leading a resurgence of e-sports which tournaments organised online on a daily basis. In fact, the major tournaments attract prizes of up to $50,000 for the winner. That’s Ksh 4.75 MILLION.

Opportunity for our youth
Locally, e-sports is nowhere near the level it is at in more developed countries but the good thing is that there does exist a strong local gaming community and there are efforts to make gaming popular in Kenya led by NexGen and, to a lesser degree Kalongo. This is a good thing and such efforts need to be encouraged for three reasons (among others):

  • Competitive gaming can actually easily become a legitimate source of income for at least some of our country’s unemployed youth. if people are winning Kshs 4.75 million just for playing a game, why can’t Kenyans get in on some of that?
  • People who are busy get up to less mischief. Again, this helps tackle our country’s problem of having a large number of unemployed, essentially idle, young people.
  • It is always good to see Kenyans out there conquering the world and making our country proud!

A couple of years ago, some Kenyan gamers qualified for the WCG (which is like the world cup of competitive gaming). The tournament was to be held in China. Unfortunately, our gamers did not have the funds to travel to China so they approached the government of Kenya through the ministry of sports. Sadly, they were not welcome – “esports” was not recognised as a legitimate sports. This needs to change, fast, lest the great and proud nation of Kenya be left behind.

Opportunity for businesses
Over the last year or so, the number of Kenyan businesses seeking to market themselves online has grown in leaps and bounds. It seems any business that is “serious” needs to be on Facebook or Twitter and it is not uncommon for the big boys to spend lavishly on Google Adwords.

To all the “serious” businesses out there: e-sports represents a massive opportunity to market yourselves online!!

As stated above, e-sports is currently becoming very popular. Very large professional tournaments are beign set up and millions of people are already avid fans of various players and teams. At the very roots of the current resurgence in esports is the Internet. Unlike in the past, e-sports events can now be transmitted “live” to millions worlwide and sites like Youtube make it possible for anyone to be a fan. In fact, popular matches on Youtube are regularly watched by hundreds of thousands of people (see this guy with over 500,000 followers).

Imagine this: what if a nice and lovely Kenyan company sponsored a Kenyan player or Kenyan gaming event on condition that it be publicized massively online? As long as the said Kenyan company chose to work with the right people, this could be a very cost-effective way to reach hundreds of thousands of people online. The best thing is that this would probably be very affordable at the moment due to the idea being so new.

In my mind, businesses in the tourism industry especially need to embrace this unique opportunity as soon as possible. What cheaper way would a tourism firm have of reaching 100,000 potential tourists?

E-sports is here, and it is serious business!

The Complete Guide To Freemium Business Models

Freemium is a business model that works by offering core services or products for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features.

Go here to learn all about The Freemium business model.

Come Meet A Kenyan Business Warrior – Kamal Budhabatti

Kamal Budhabatti is a name you should probably register in your mind for posterity reasons. This is a man who is set to conquer the world. The unassuming Indian-Kenyan entrepreneur is working relentlessly towards putting African software on the global map, and he is succeeding. Kamal is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Craft Silicon, a Kenya-based global software development and services company worth around Ksh 1.7 billion and with an annual income of over Ksh 500 million, sources more than 85% of its business from without Kenya offering software solutions in different languages including French, English, Arabic and Spanish across Africa, Asia, Europe and America.

The League of Young Professionals warmly invites you for an Entrepreneurship Forum:
Date – Thursday 25th of August, 2011.
Time – 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
Venue – Marble Arch Hotel (Behind Fire Station, Next to Akamba)
Charge – Kshs 500/-

Our Guest Speaker will be Kamal Budhabatti – Founder and CEO Craft Silicon. He will share with us his Entrepreneurial Journey and the Secrets of the Success of Craft Silicon.

Cyber Crime in Kenya

www.bettersms.net hacked!

www.bettersms.net hacked!


A couple of days ago I was at my local – by local I mean not one of those fancy places in Westlands – barber shop when suddenly two policeman came in and arrested one of the barbers. The crime? Cyber crime (their words). The barber shop offers phone charging services and , apparently, this one barber had figured out how to get into people’s phones when they were charging. He then accessed their Safaricom Bonga points and sent them to himself.

Now, I know the guy pretty well. He hasn’t been to any college or university …. if a guy such as him is into cyber crime, then what of those educated to the highest levels of computer science?

Just recently, I cam across this. Yes. Someone somehow accessed Classic FM’s text messages system and leaked some (very sensitive) text messages to the public. If you have ever sent a text message to Classic FM then you better check if your message has been ‘leaked’. Otherwise you may be surprised to find that your husband figured out what you have been telling Classic about him.

The state of cyber security in Kenya is simply woeful. It seems everyone wants to get online, build fancy websites and all sorts of ‘apps’ but no one wants to invest in basic security. Take the case of the screenshot above which is from www.bettersms.net – they got violated publicly and embarrassed. Just recently, Idd Salim talked about the shockingly lacking security in our local online banking sites.

What’s all this leading to? If it hasn’t happened yet, someone will end up losing a lot of money that will affect a lot of people. Don’t let that be you, sawa?


Are You Becoming Cheap Labour?

I bet you have heard about websites like Freelancer.com, Fiverr and GigBucks. These are websites in which anyone can sign up and start making money online almost instantly. Basically, on these websites you can sell your services for a small fee. The good thing about them is that they are very popular and as long as you are skilled in something it is very difficult NOT to make money online on these sites.

Indeed, there are literally millions of people who are trying to make money using these websites (and other similar ones). Of all these millions of people, many actually do make money! Sounds nice, eh? You want to go try it out? Go ahead. But before you do, please take a moment to think it through. These websites are loved by people by me because I can get really talented people to offer their services to me really cheap. The people doing jobs on these sites are certainly happy to take my money. And I’m certainly happy to pay them… you know why? Because it is crazy cheap labour!! I can literally hire a graphic designer for $5 (Kshs 450) to create a logo for me then go ahead and sell that logo to someone else for Kshs 5,000/- Pesa taslimu.

Do you get my point? Sites like Freelancer.com and Fiverr represent hundreds of thousands of people willing and able to work for you at the cheapest rates imaginable. Is the smartest thing you can do to join these hundreds of thousands of people and to compete with them? Really?

WAKE up!! Find a way to make some money off this insanely cheap labour. Do not BECOME the cheap labour.